This invention relates to thermoformed thermoplastic truck bedliners in general and to bedliners with structure for engaging load restraing members in particular.
Although long used in agricultural and commercial applications, pick-up trucks with open cargo beds have also become increasingly popular as personal and family vehicles. The commercial vehicle owner, although concerned with performnance and cost effectiveness of the vehicle, often considers the vehicle as a traveling company advertisement or symbol. A neat and well-maintained vehicle is more likely to favorably impress customers. Owners of personal vehicles, while concerned with functionality and efficiency, are also concerned with pride of ownership, personal image, and outward appearances. In addition, the automotive enthusiast desires to maintain his vehicle in as close to a "like new" condition as possible.
Truck bedliners of plastic or rubber are commonly employed to protect the pick-up truck cargo bed. These truck bedliners are available in a wide variety of configurations to suit the wide variety of available trucks. One-piece thermoformed thermoplastic truck bedliners provide a cost effective means of protecting the truck cargo bed.
To facilitate the handling of cargo, many truck cargo boxes have features which stabilize and control shifting of cargo in the truck box. For instance, the box may have stake holes along the upper peripheral edges so that boards may be inserted into the sides of the truck box, so extending the sides to retain light-weight, high-volume loads. Some truck boxes have supports on the side walls for horizontal boards, so that wide loads may be supported above the interiorly extending truck wheel wells on horizontal boards.
Some trucks have features formed into the sides of the truck to support a plank or "2.times.4" board so it extends upright across the width of the bed. Boards extending across the floor of the bed of the cargo box are useful to prevent the shifting of cargo as the truck accelerates and brakes.
Truck bedliners have been developed which extend existing features in truck cargo boxes and which provide features such as horizontal board pockets for use in truck boxes that lack them. For instance, one type of truck bedliner provides a series of board slots formed by vertical ribs which extend into the interior of the cargo box. These series of board slots allow a vertical 2.times.4 board to be adjustably positioned among the slots to secure the load into place.
Bedliners come in two general types, so-called "over-the-rail" liners which extend up and cover the upper edges of the cargo box, and so-called "under-the-rail" liners in which side-walls of the liner terminate under the upper flanges or rails of the cargo box.
Board holder pockets have been used for a number of years to support boards horizontally to prevent shifting of cargo. Board holder pockets, however, open upwardly, and hence retain the possibility that a board held therein may be rotated or shifted out of the pocket if subjected to an upwardly-directed force.
A thermoformed truck bedliner is needed which will accept commonly sized timbers to extend across the truck bed and which will support the timbers against loads applied by shifting cargo.